The Republic of Thieves is out?! also other book talk

Usagi

Crimson King wrote: »

i would like guy gavriel kay a lot better if he wrote straight historical fiction instead of thinly disguised pastiches

you know, like umberto eco does. but with less of a semiotics boner, presumably

i read the island of the day before recently, it's really good and perhaps more accessible than the name of the rose

See the semiotics thing is why I love Eco so much, I didn't even know it was a thing until I started reading him but I am a huuuuuuuge nerd about it now

Though he definitely ranges from the super subtle to the BEATING YOU OVER THE HEAD WITH SYMBOLISM

V1m

Name Of The Rose works as a straight up good book even if you ignore all that fancy stuff.

Lost Salient

50 Incredibly Tough Books for Extreme Readers

The shortlist, for those interested but lazy:

Nightwood, Djuna Barnes
Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
Moby-Dick, Herman Melville
Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace
J R, William Gaddis
Finnegans Wake, James Joyce
The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
Bad Behavior, Mary Gaitskill
In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust
Alphabetical Africa, Walter Abish
Geek Love, Katherine Dunn
Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs
The Faerie Queene, Edmund Spenser
Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh
Pet Sematary, Stephen King
Coin Locker Babies, Ryu Murakami
Battle Royale, Koushun Takami
House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski
To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
The Painted Bird, Jerzy Kosinski
Wittgenstein’s Mistress, David Markson
Johnny Got His Gun, Dalton Trumbo
Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
The Making of Americans, Gertrude Stein
The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
Hopscotch, Julio Cortazar
Out, Natsuo Kirino
2666, Roberto Bolaño
Tampa, Alissa Nutting
War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Laurence Sterne
Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer
Underworld, Don DeLillo
Almanac of the Dead, Leslie Marmon Silko
Cosmos, Witold Gombrowicz
The Conservationist, Nadine Gordimer
Sophie’s Choice, William Styron
Clarissa, Or the History of a Young Lady, Samuel Richardson
The Unfortunates, B.S. Johnson
The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, Lydia Davis
The Tunnel, William Gass
The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion
The Demon, Hubert Selby Jr.
The Royal Family, William T. Vollmann
Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri
A Tale of a Tub, Jonathan Swift
The Castle, Franz Kafka
The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Balefuego

Pet Semetary? really?

I love Stephen King but really?

Lost Salient

That was kind of how I felt, but it's only one of two books of his that I've ever read, so my metric is skewed.

Antimatter

i dont think i've read any of those to completion and now i feel like an ass

Brovid Hasselsmof

Tough as in hard to read?

Trainspotting ain't so bad.

Lost Salient

The article actually discusses why each book is on the list; Pet Semetary is for being gruesome and scary. Trainspotting is for its lack of linear narrative and its content.

Brovid Hasselsmof

I am too lazy to click links, sorry.

Balefuego

Maybe I am desensitized to murderous zombie babies but if you want a Stephen King book that is actually really hard to read because it is gruesome and terrifying then I think Gerald's Game is what you are looking for.*



*disclaimer: if you read Gerald's Game don't blame me

Brovid Hasselsmof

The Wasp Factory should be on that list.

And Filth for Irvine Welsh instead of Trainspotting.

(imho)

Balefuego

Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons should be on that list

Straightzi

Yeah why put Pet Sematary on there for being gruesome and scary instead of like, I dunno, Haunted

The only one there I've read to completion is Heart of Darkness, which is a fuckin' breeze, and I'm most of the way through Infinite Jest right now, which isn't really that bad, all told

Lost Salient

I have also read Heart of Darkness but I'm not sure I would describe it as a breeze.

Straightzi

Also the writer there totally does not explain why Infinite Jest is a tough read, he just calls it obvious

There are a bunch of things that could put it on this list, I'll admit that, but I'm really curious as to why this particular person put it as so difficult

Crimson King

Grey Ghost wrote: »

THESPOOKY wrote: »

Republic of Thieves big ol' fuckin spoilers about Locke

I always thought Locke was going to be connected to the Bondsmagi from birth somehow, but jesus god almighty he's reincarnated

I'm still not sold on this being true

the whole thing where patience is like "here's my prophecy, your punishment is that you'll never know if it's true"

i just imagine locke being like "i'm just going to assume it's not then, get fucked", flipping her off and walking out

Straightzi

Okay I read through that whole list and I am mostly just angry about it now

Lost Salient

I think

That is exceptionally silly

It's not like it's a top list or something, it's just fifty books that are difficult reads for a number of reasons

THESPOOKY

Crimson King wrote: »

Grey Ghost wrote: »

THESPOOKY wrote: »

Republic of Thieves big ol' fuckin spoilers about Locke

I always thought Locke was going to be connected to the Bondsmagi from birth somehow, but jesus god almighty he's reincarnated

I'm still not sold on this being true

the whole thing where patience is like "here's my prophecy, your punishment is that you'll never know if it's true"

i just imagine locke being like "i'm just going to assume it's not then, get fucked", flipping her off and walking out

One time back in the day-day, Chains warned Locke pretty sternly that when you talk to Bondsmagi, 'ain't start shit, won't be shit.'

2

"Nice prophecy, asshole."

Lost Salient

Sorry, that was not very friendly of me

I have been in something of A Mood today

knitdan

Antimatter wrote: »

i dont think i've read any of those to completion and now i feel like an ass

I love this bit. It's so evocative.

Also, Battle Royale and Heart of Darkness are not particularly difficult reads.

Straightzi

The list is a really weird combination of books that deal with difficult subjects and books that are difficult to parse, which is annoying

But more importantly, the person who wrote it is barely above the level of emoticons with some of her descriptions, and there are a number of things there that I would like to be discussed further in order to understand why she considered things so "difficult"

Crimson King

i'm amused by the implication that there is such a thing as an extreme reader, as if the ability to enjoy blood meridian is on par with the ability to pull a freight train by your testicles

Lost Salient

Man next time I am just not sharing shit

Good lord

wirehead26

Oof, GRRM is really upping the "put characters through horrible shit" mode in ADWD.

Antimatter

knitdan wrote: »

Antimatter wrote: »

i dont think i've read any of those to completion and now i feel like an ass

I love this bit. It's so evocative.

Also, Battle Royale and Heart of Darkness are not particularly difficult reads.

disagreeing about heart of darkness, which is the only one of them i started

Anzekay

I... I've read about half of those books or so.

And honestly, I think a lot of that list overestimates how difficult some of them (at least of the ones I've read) are. A lot of them are going to be way easier to read for people who are actually interested in the genre or theme or whatever.

So sure, if someone sat down and just read all 50 books in a row they'd find some of them really difficult to read, and others (the ones they are really interested in) pretty easy. It's all kinda subjective.

Antimatter

i have read the terror, drood, and the lord of the rings as a single volume, though

those were kinda slogs at parts

THESPOOKY

Just finished Republic of Thieves

I'm really glad this book wasn't full of Locke getting the shit tortured out of him by Bondsmagi

Sabetha, Jean, and the Sanzas were all-stars

Holy fucking shit the Falconer is a magic T1000

Shorty

Lost Salient wrote: »

50 Incredibly Tough Books for Extreme Readers

The shortlist, for those interested but lazy:

Nightwood, Djuna Barnes
Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
Moby-Dick, Herman Melville
Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace
J R, William Gaddis
Finnegans Wake, James Joyce
The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
Bad Behavior, Mary Gaitskill
In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust
Alphabetical Africa, Walter Abish
Geek Love, Katherine Dunn
Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs
The Faerie Queene, Edmund Spenser
Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh
Pet Sematary, Stephen King
Coin Locker Babies, Ryu Murakami
Battle Royale, Koushun Takami
House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski
To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
The Painted Bird, Jerzy Kosinski
Wittgenstein’s Mistress, David Markson
Johnny Got His Gun, Dalton Trumbo
Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
The Making of Americans, Gertrude Stein
The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
Hopscotch, Julio Cortazar
Out, Natsuo Kirino
2666, Roberto Bolaño
Tampa, Alissa Nutting
War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Laurence Sterne
Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer
Underworld, Don DeLillo
Almanac of the Dead, Leslie Marmon Silko
Cosmos, Witold Gombrowicz
The Conservationist, Nadine Gordimer
Sophie’s Choice, William Styron
Clarissa, Or the History of a Young Lady, Samuel Richardson
The Unfortunates, B.S. Johnson
The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, Lydia Davis
The Tunnel, William Gass
The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion
The Demon, Hubert Selby Jr.
The Royal Family, William T. Vollmann
Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri
A Tale of a Tub, Jonathan Swift
The Castle, Franz Kafka
The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I have read Naked Lunch and Clarissa

Naked Lunch was just crazy on the balance

but Clarissa was my Vietnam

which, let's be real, was about the best preparation I could have given myself for attempting to read Infinite Jest (which I'm chipping away at right now)

Poorochondriac

Yes Shorty yesssssss

Everyone read Infinite Jest, it is the infinite best

Poorochondriac

I finished up The City and the City a couple of days ago. Dug it a lot. The middle sagged somewhat, but I thought it had some really interesting things to say about taboos/social norms. And I really admired how it handled its fantastic conceit, writing it like Chandler wrote LA. Glitzy and impressive on the surface, but digging makes it less fantastic, not more. That's something I've not seen before, I don't think.

A book I'll be chewing over for a while, certainly.

knitdan

penny-arcade.com/comic/2012/05/14

Shorty

Poorochondriac wrote: »

Yes Shorty yesssssss

Everyone read Infinite Jest, it is the infinite best

I'm only about 200 pages in

to say that I like it would not be entirely accurate

it is incredibly frustrating

but I can't shake the feeling that it is building to something brilliant

Flarne

I'm coming up on the end of Infinite Jest. The last half feels like it was a lot easier to read than the first.

knitdan

Flarne wrote: »

I'm coming up on the end of Infinite Jest. The last half feels like it was a lot easier to read than the first.

That's because by that point you've trained your brain how to read it.

Poorochondriac

I remember the first time IJ had a footnote within a footnote

I believe my reaction was something akin to, "Oh, game on, motherfucker"

knitdan

Or the ones early on that just said, "see note 300 supra". And you had to decide whether or not to read ahead in the footnotes.

Reading Infinite Jest on Kindle was amazing. The footnotes were done so well, and I've never seen them implemented that well since.

Probably because I don't read a whole lot of footnote heavy books.

Shorty

knitdan wrote: »

Or the ones early on that just said, "see note 300 supra". And you had to decide whether or not to read ahead in the footnotes.

Reading Infinite Jest on Kindle was amazing. The footnotes were done so well, and I've never seen them implemented that well since.

Probably because I don't read a whole lot of footnote heavy books.

my patience for this kind of literary silly buggers is basically nil after having read pale fire

I'll read the footnotes as they're given, that's bad enough

Brovid Hasselsmof

To be fair I find most books hard these days.

My white whale is probably Crime and Punishment. I don't know if I'll ever go back and finish it.